“The boxes and the emergency halls are crowded. There are no more places anywhere, ”notes an emergency doctor *. He’s tired, exhausted from repeating the same thing over and over again. “There are no beds in the hospital to send incoming patients. “” When we arrive in the morning, there are fifteen people left at night, who have not been seen, because there is no time, no room, not enough people. The medical staff sigh. Eyes darkened by fatigue that has been accumulating for months. The caregivers are pumped, dried up by the hopes that they saw born during the health crisis of March. Quickly sucked into an economic, practical reality that leaves them no hope. The resignations are numerous. The desire to leave is very contagious. “I lost my faith,” admits one of them. We are all humanitarians at heart, nothing has changed after the Covid, there are many departures of doctors and paramedics in the service. We can no longer work as we should. ”
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The Covid test
During the Spring Covid period, which strongly impacted the Metz-Thionville CHR, activity was particularly dense. “We worked hard, but we did our real job,” explains an emergency doctor. Patients were afraid of the virus and no longer came for anything. We only treated very serious cardiac cases, cerebrovascular accidents (CVA)… What we were trained for. From this period, caregivers have waited a lot. “The access to care service (SAS) was set up to direct people directly to the appropriate services, without going through emergencies when it is not necessary,” recalls François Braun, president of Samu-Urgence de France (SUdF). “And it worked. The asset of this period was also solidarity, general practitioners were not overwhelmed and took charge of city medicine as a whole. “
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And now ?
The image of stretchers in the corridors reappears. The symptom is general in all hospitals in France. “We favor the programmed, emergency patients come after others,” analyzes the president of Samu-Urgences de France. Today, we should find the right balance between scheduled activity and emergencies. Especially since the passages in an emergency service, except disaster, are stable. We could almost predict the number of beds needed by specialty. “
The caregivers await a Segur II to compensate for the absences of the first. “An increase of € 300”, insists François Braun, while recalling however that health professionals seek quality of work, “want to be with patients”. Wishes that inevitably go through hiring. Marie-Odile Saillard, general manager of CHR Metz-Thionville, alerted the prefect’s representative on New Year’s Eve by hammering once again that the emergency services of the CHR are falling under the critical threshold. “50% of emergency room jobs are vacant” And those who remain bear the scars of exhaustion. Looking at the inventory, we don’t forget that France is in 26th place out of 28 in the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) ranking on working conditions in hospitals.
* The interviewees preferred to remain anonymous.
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